1. Introduction
In this paper, one of the most important issues for humankind
– food insecurity – is addressed, as well as the increasing challenges
that the world is facing to achieve global food security. The
possible contribution that agricultural biotechnologies can make
in helping to face these challenges is also considered. FAO recently
organised the international technical conference on “Agricultural
Biotechnologies in Developing Countries: options and opportunities
in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries and agro-industry to face
the challenges of food insecurity and climate change” (ABDC-10),
and the paper also provides an overview of the conference and
reports on its major outputs.
2. Defining food security and quantifying food insecurity
For FAO, food security exists when all people, at all times, have
physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food
that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life (FAO, 1996; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007).
There are four dimensions of food security: the availability of food;
access to food; utilisation of food; and food system stability. For
food security objectives to be realised, all four dimensions must be
fulfilled simultaneously.